Plasma transport from multicomponent approach

Abstract

Plasma measurements in the Earth's magnetotail have revealed occasional existence of multiple plasma components. In this work, we present the first quantitative comparison between single-component and multicomponent approaches on the transport of mass and energy in the magnetotail with Geotail 3D plasma measurements. Two events are examined in detail, one during substorm expansion and the other during substorm recovery. It is found that the mass and energy transport from the plasma moment approach is usually underestimated for the dynamic hot plasma component. For the substorm expansion case, the bursty bulk flow event based on the moment approach is actually a case of a super-Alfvénic-speed beam passing through (BPT) a rather stationary plasma. This newly discovered BPT phenomenon should be distinguished from bursty bulk flow. Therefore, the multicomponent approach could provide a better insight than the moment approach on the actual dynamic situation. Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.